I could really use your help! I am currently working in rhoPisoTwinParcelFoam (OF 1.7.0) and I have a cylinder of stagnant air (diameter = 2mm, height = 10 mm) with 174 manually injection SnO2 parcels, forming a porous layer (see attached picture). The system is at room temperature, 298K, and there is a continuously heated bottom plate at 573K. The parcels are stationary (no velocity) and I want to investigate the heat transfer through both the solid and the air. I have some preliminary results, but they are not what I was expecting.

My thoughts were that the heat should conduct through the solid first, then it should transfer from the warm solid to the cooler air while simultaneously there should be convection through the air from the heated plate. This does not occur. The results I get basically are convection through the air and then the warmed air heats up the cooler solid parcels. This hints to me that the conduction through the solid is not being considered.

Can anyone please tell me: does rhoPisoTwinParcelFoam consider both conduction and convection? If not, is possible to have conjugate heat transfer in this solver and how would it be incorporated? I am not very good with modifying the solvers, so I would need some guidance if I had to start writing and incorporating new parts to the code.

If indeed rhoPisoTwinParcelFoam is already incorporating conduction and convection, can anyone give me some insight and guidance as to what my problem might be? Why am I getting these funny results? My though is that the parcels are set to just barely touch one another. Maybe there is not enough contact for there to be conduction from parcel to parcel I cannot really think of another reason why this might occur.

I know that chtMultiRegionFoam incorporates conjugate heat transfer, but the most important part of using rhoPisoTwinParcelFoam is for the injection of the spherical parcels. Any insight into this topic or information regarding my choice in solvers would also be greatly appreciated.

I really hope someone can help me out here. I know some one else out there has to be working on something similar. Any related information is more than welcome.

I attached a paraview photo of the mesh and parcels. As you can see the cylinder is already turning red at the top, while the parcels still remain blue. This was a good photo to show that the air is heating up faster than the solid SnO2 parcels.